Aim for the right brand direction

Developing the right brand image for your company is not as simple as providing your company name and requesting a logo. Designers and agencies need to understand who you are, where you want to go and who you want to speak to. It is a process that most companies and individuals underestimate and don’t take as seriously as they should, which results to the poor production of further work based on a weak brand. You only get one shot to get it right before you start basing the rest of your company design needs on your brand, such as your website, stationery, etc. So if you are serious for investing on the creation of a successful brand for your company we suggest the following points to be followed:

What are your brand values?
Before anything starts you should define and list what are your brand values. Who you are as a company, what is your history and where you want to go? What is your vision? This will help understand the reasoning behind your company name, your company aims, and how you perceive your brand.

Define your audience
Every brand has a target audience, and is never ‘all people’. As you cannot appeal to everyone there should be a target group you need to aim for. This is the group that you will talk to, that you will aim to sell your services and products. Once you decide your target audience it will be easier to identify which channels you will use to target them through, such as social media, TV, radio, offline media, etc. This decision will define where you will plan to allocate your budget for promoting and advertising your brand so you don’t end up wasting your money. A very important factor to make sure you get right, but this is where we come in with our experience to consult and help you understand your audience and discover your targeted channels.

It is not just your logo
Your logo may feel as your starting point for everything but it is not everything. Your logo will get created and defined by appropriate research, including all element from the previous points made, and all future design and creative work will get produced around it. But during your logo development there are many other factors that need to get defined for a complete brand. Such as your brand colour palette and typography which will be used across all other media, your tone of voice that will be used for the way copy is written and communicated across channels to your target audience, and your attitude which will help define the design styles used, photography and assets needed to compliment your brand.

Allow creative freedom
Even if you know that you want a conservative brand approach, there is no harm for allowing some creative freedom to explore different possibilities before you set your decision in stone. Providing creative freedom will allow exploration of more creative options to compare and will allow more room for flexibility and adaptation of your brand across the various mediums you will wish to use. Worst case scenario, it will make you even surer that the original approach you aimed for is the right one for you.

Invest in your brand
This is definitely the number one rule we advise our clients. Do not rush into quick results just because you need to start your company operations soon. Plan accordingly and give room to spend sufficient time on your brand development. If you get your brand wrong it may affect the desired results you aim for your company. If you rush into results that you may not be 100% happy, it will bother you forever until you decide to re-do your brand… and that’s never a cost-effective idea. Plan and budget well to spend on quality, and take your time to get it right. And don’t forget to invest on quality assets such as proper photography or associated graphics, for complementing your brand across all media.